


dancing with skeletons, playing with smoke

by rhyol1te



Series: magic & bananas [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Magical Realism, kind of, the author might be misusing the phrase 'magical realism'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 20:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhyol1te/pseuds/rhyol1te
Summary: Eponine is ten when she learns that she's not powerless.It's boringly ordinary, her discovery that she's boringly ordinary: she's squatting on the sidewalk, frying a leaf with a magnifying glass and watching the delicate wisp of smoke curl its way up from the leaf, and she wants to get a better look at the smoke, so she just... brings it closer to her face, and then falls backwards, coughing and spluttering because she did it, she did something, she has magic.Les Amis and co. with some magical realism thrown in.





	dancing with skeletons, playing with smoke

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my [ magic & bananas](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1280513) series, but it's not necessary to read that to understand this.

Eponine is ten when she learns that she's not powerless.

It's not some kind of divine-revelation thing: there's no movie montage of her learning to use her power on her own, no stirring music. 

It's boringly ordinary, her discovery that she's boringly ordinary: she's squatting on the sidewalk, frying a leaf with a magnifying glass and watching the delicate wisp of smoke curl its way up from the leaf, and she wants to get a better look at the smoke, so she just... brings it closer to her face, and then falls backwards, coughing and spluttering because she did it, she did something, she has magic.

No wonder her tests for controlling fire failed so badly: she wasn't trying to control the right thing.

Later, she won't be able to describe what, exactly, she did, or tell Azelma what it feels like to be able to reach out with something that (according to most physics) doesn't exist, and pull the smoke towards her. 

She'll try: she'll excitedly tell Azelma and Gavroche (who won't be able to use wind _and_ fire, somehow for a while) about what happened, how she uses an impulse she was sure she didn't have, but she won't be able to capture the feeling of knowing that she can control smoke. The feeling of knowing that she has some kind of magic, even if it's a kind that she's never heard of before.

What happens in the next few months could be compressed into a montage with stirring music, a series of video clips of her teaching herself how to use her power because there's no one to do it for her, but then she'd have to tell someone about her magic, and she's not sure if she wants to do that yet.

For now, she just keeps a packet of matches in her pocket so that she always has a source of smoke near her.

...

Grantaire can make an avalanche, if he wants. He can make the earth roll in long, slow waves, like a cat stretching its spine. He could reach into the earth with nothing but that part of him that's pure magic and pull up handfuls of pure molten rock.

He thinks he can do all that, anyway: he hasn't really done any big magic like that, because Musichetta would kick him out if he filled the living room with lava.

Eponine nods when he tells her that, and doesn't say anything about how awful it must be to know the extent of your power and be powerless. She has what looks like smoke curling around her head and in her hair like some kind of halo, and for a minute he thinks she's smoking, but she says that she's not, she can control smoke, and that she's pretty good at not causing lung cancer with her presence, unlike cigarettes.

He's never used his power for anything bigger than skipping rocks, he says back, because he's a little bit of a walking earthquake hazard.  
She laughs at that, and they talk more about powers and puns, and they're friends.

...

Enjolras doesn't feel that he's burning, clearly. He's like some kind of burning bush, Grantaire mutters to Eponine, the way that he throws sparks off his fingers when he waves his hands in the air to punctuate his speeches, the way that the hint of flame, the possibility of fire, seems to hover around him as he speaks.

The two of them aren't fire and water: they're earth and fire, which is mismatched and yet somehow more fitting. 

Enjolras didn't have a big moment of discovery like Eponine, or like thirteen-year-old Grantaire causing an earthquake in his neighborhood. He can't remember a single moment in which the fact that he can control fire came to him, or one where he didn't have the awareness of flames-that-could-be hovering in the back of his mind.

Even when he was small, he throw bits of flame, barely thinking about it. It was when he wasn't that the problems lay: he still instinctually lights things on fire when he's scared or excited or angry.

He's gotten good at extinguishing his fire, because even he likes to live in an unburned house, but it's rare that he doesn't have a slightly singed look to his sleeves or collar.

...

Bossuet has fire like Enjolras, but his is wilder, somehow. They'll both summon a fireball when startled, but only Bossuet will accidentally light the curtains aflame. 

Joly, with his wind to Bossuet's wild, half-controlled flames, is both a terrible companion and a perfect one. 

Musichetta laughs, and says he's outnumbered with two wind-mages in the house.  
Grantaire protests that they're an equal number of wind-controllers and people who can't do anything with wind, from where he's chopping vegetables for stir-fry, but then Bossuet lights the rice on fire, and the four of them are distracted.

… 

Joly's wind is cheerful. He uses it to tease Grantaire with the scent of breakfast, and waft summer heat away from himself.

At the meeting, Joly turns around in his seat, grins at Grantaire, and sets his pen skittering across the table with a push of his wind.

Enjolras looks back, and asks what's going on.

"Nothing," Joly says, grinning. "Let's go over the preparations for the march in two months again, I think I have a few ideas.”

...

Enjolras walks with Combeferre and Courfeyrac after the meeting. Courfeyrac sends glowing balls of what seems to be pure light bouncing in front of them to light their way.

Light isn't one of the more common affinities, but neither is the earth itself or smoke or bone, so Courfeyrac in good company.

He could probably learn to manipulate fire if he wanted to - it's half light already - but he doesn't: fire is angry and burns, and while that's perfect for Enjolras, Courfeyrac would rather stay with pure light, which just blinds.

One of Courfeyrac's lights bounces enthusiastically in front of them, bouncing in the darkening street like a puppy.

Combeferre blinks against the sudden glow, and complains about the spots that the light leaves in his vision.

...

Combeferre could drown them all, but he doesn't. 

Instead, he teaches himself how to grow plants and summon moths and heal wounds, and he ignores the coaxing of the sea that wants to cover the city in its embrace.

...

Bahorel can't cause an earthquake, but he can build a dam quickly. He finds his power during a rainy season that no one knows isn't magic in origin, and the river's threatening to topple over the edge of the preexisting dam. 

Like so many other people who discover their power only when it's really needed, he does something he can't describe and pulls boulders from under the grounds, and shifts the earth, and then there's another three feet on top of the dam, and everyone's watching him, and muttering about the rocks that he sent flying through the air.

He's never able to use his power again. 

"It's just for when it's a disaster, I guess," he says, shrugging. "I guess I don't need it every day.”

...

Jehan doesn't have the benefit of a some kind of quiet discovery of his powers. No, Jehan has the benefit of his childhood pet (a parakeet) dying when he was thirteen and then, with his thirteen-year-old grief at having a pet die he reaches out, and does... _something_, and then Blue Jean is hopping around in an awful parody of the living bird he once was. Jehan is fascinated.

The fact that they can't make Blue Jean fly is what gives it away: try as he might, all they can do is wrench the poor bird about by his bones, his dead eyes staring. 

Jehan can't get the bird off the floor.

He (Jehan) lets go, and then Blue Jean is just Blue Jean again, lying where Jehan found it in the bottom of its cage. Well and truly dead.

Jehan thinks that his power is quite cool, and very horrifying, and doesn't use it for three years.  
He tries again at sixteen, and this time he doesn't do anything besides sense where the bones in a graveyard are.

When nothing happens, he leans against a tree, knees shaking, half laughing and almost crying.

He gradually grows more used to their power until it's just something he could do and don't, not something he occasionally do by accident and something he's terrified of.

Eventually, the awareness of everyone's skeleton inside them becomes normal.

Really, it's not that bad, to never be able to use your power, he says to Marius, who just nods.

...

Marius's grandfather tries to teach him to use fire, but he's never able to summon more than a spark.

His grandfather is disgusted, and they argue, and then Marius finds out that his father could also do things with wood, and that it's not some kind of lowly, impure talent like his grandfather said, and he leaves.

Like a tree, Grantaire says. Leaves. More than one leaf? And you control wood? Talk to trees, whatever? Get it?  
Marius gets it, and wonders where he's going to sleep.

"You can stay at our apartment for now," Courfeyrac says, after sharing a glance with Enjolras and Combeferre. "We have an extra couch."

… 

Cosette meets Marius hiking, when he trips and falls in front of her. Maybe her life is destined to be one big pun (Grantaire can certainly find enough to describe Marius's life), but they go on their first date three days later.

She explains her childhood to him after they've been dating for a while, how she's pretty sure that her dad was running from someone, and how she learned to do the thing she can do, the one that makes her look like someone else.

It's not quite shapeshifting, and she's recognisable if anyone looks for too long, but she can change her appearance just enough to give the impression of being someone else. 

She's a chameleon who can change her scales, but always look, somehow, the same.

“It's a useful skill,” she says. “It helped a lot when I was younger.”

“Huh,” Marius says. “I've never heard of anything like that before.'' 

“Well I'd never heard of talking to trees, or playing with smoke, or controlling someone through their bones,” Cosette says, mouth tilted into a smile. “We're all pushing the boundaries of magic just by doing what we do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos make me super happy! <3


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